Changing history a new leadership skill for Jackson County commissioners

JACKSON, MI – It’s astonishing to watch as history is rewritten to erase real events.

History-changing authority was unleashed last week by the Jackson County Board of Commissioners in order to kick someone off an appointed board.

Commissioners altered history by “correcting” the official record of their previous meeting to create events that did not happen. It was amazing.

Here are the real events of that previous meeting, on June 18. I saw them with my own squinty eyes.

The board voted 5-4 to appoint Commissioner Gail Mahoney to the county Parks and Recreation Commission. Mahoney was already vice chairwoman, unless that history changed too, and she wished to continue serving on the Parks Commission.

Mahoney won votes from herself, Chairman James Shotwell Jr., and Commissioners Philip Duckham III, David Elwell, and John Polaczyk.

“Commissioner Mahoney, you’re back on (the Parks Commission), or still on,” Shotwell announced. I heard it with my own floppy ears.

When commissioners next met on July 23, minutes of the June 18 meeting came up for routine approval. That’s when the astonishment began.

Meeting minutes are sometimes changed to fix errors, but this time they were changed to "correct" the truth.

Duckham asked the clerk to “correct my vote” by recording it for Mike Rand Jr. instead of Mahoney. Then Elwell and Shotwell also asked the clerk to “correct” their votes for Rand.

Now the official record will evidently say Rand was appointed June 18 by a 7-2 vote, even though it’s not true.

“People are going to go backwards and take their votes away,” said Mahoney, a 19-year veteran of the county board. That pretty much sums up the situation.

When I asked commissioners how altering the record of June 18 can be legal and proper, I was told county policy allows them to change votes.

As explanations go, that’s a head-scratcher.

Maybe commissioners can change votes, but I doubt any policy says they can wait five weeks to do it by fiddling with meeting minutes.

Mahoney, the only black commissioner, vows to sue for discrimination. I will avoid delving into reasons for her ouster, because that subject is a hornets’ nest of charges, denials and counter-charges.

Regardless of reasons, the mechanics are a different issue.

If commissioners want Mahoney off the Parks Commission, it seems like they should vote to kick her off. If for some reason they cannot rescind appointments, it seems like commissioners ought to be stuck with the choice they really made.

Even if changing history is somehow allowed by rules of parliamentary procedure, it violates common sense.